Q: What is Viridity Energy?
• Viridity Energy is a virtual power generation company that transforms large energy consumers into 24/7 virtual power plants, increasing energy efficiency, decreasing energy costs and creating continuous revenue that enables the attainment of economic and sustainability goals.

Q: How does it work?
• By integrating customers’ overall energy load, including generation, energy storage and load shedding capabilities, Viridity’s state of the art smart grid technology allows customers to optimize energy usage and efficiency on a 24/7 basis, earning valuable revenues and contributing to a more stable and balanced electricity grid.

• Viridity Energy’s unique software platform, VPower™, makes it easy for customers to manage complicated, multi-variable energy portfolios via one centralized, user-friendly platform. Facility managers optimize their energy use by shifting and balancing their load and by integrating a variety of energy resources, including distributed generation, smart building technology and energy storage devices, into a cost effective, sustainable virtual power generation program.

Q: Who are Viridity’s customers?
• Viridity works with large institutions such as college campuses, federal and municipal complexes, military bases, industrial companies, and hospitals to optimize their portfolios of buildings and energy investments by creating unified power assets.

• Viridity Energy’s customers want to maximize the monetization of their building and energy investments and accelerate their achievement of sustainability goals.

Q: What was the motivation for Viridity’s approach?
• Electricity markets are uniquely structured because the demand for electricity has traditionally been considered inelastic, meaning that the demand for the commodity does not increase or decrease in relation to the price of the commodity. Viridity is looking to change this model by giving electricity consumers the information they need to make informed decisions about their energy usage.

• Currently, end users of electricity don’t have a means for understanding price fluctuations in energy costs, and thus do not have the ability – or incentive – to adjust their usage. Viridity provides large energy consumers with a platform to not only see and understand energy pricing in the power market, but to make informed decisions about their energy usage based on these price differentials.

• Viridity works with customers to figure out how to curtail energy use and rely on off-grid generation when the prices are high (such as in the middle of the day, or during the summer months), and to shift heavy load to times when prices are lower (such as the middle of the night).

Q: What is Viridity’s ultimate goal?
• Viridity’s ultimate goal is to create a true consumer market for smart grid technology. Viridity wants to demonstrate that using resources more efficiently and controlling load can create a smarter, more sustainable energy grid for everyone. By allowing large energy consumers such as universities, hospitals, manufacturing facilities and large industrial and office complexes to be active participants in reducing energy consumption, optimizing energy resources and balancing the electric grid, Viridity hopes to create a smarter market that provides benefits to all consumers.

Q: How does Viridity differ from traditional demand response providers?
• Traditional demand response provides customers with the opportunity to shed load at times of peak demand when energy costs are the highest, such as during a hot summer’s day. For example, traditional demand response customers may decide to make sacrifices such as turning off some of the lights or raising the temperature of the air conditioning by a few degrees when requested by the utility or third party. Customers that participate in demand response receive a compliance payment for shedding load. Some demand response companies take this approach one step further, allowing customers to shed load even when the grid is not under strain, and earn back revenues by reducing their energy consumption.

• Viridity’s is leading the evolution from demand response to 24/7 virtual power generation. Instead of simply working with customers to reduce overall energy load, which often requires sacrifices of comfort or convenience, Viridity partners with customers, providing them with access to an advanced software platform that evaluates the customer’s overall energy load and optimizes their energy usage on a 24/7 basis. This optimization looks at three essential components: generation, energy storage and load shedding. Viridity helps large energy customers reduce their overall consumption, saving customers substantial money on their energy costs while allowing them to increase their energy efficiency, all the while providing them with an additional source of revenue.

Q: Why is it important to create a smart grid? What will a smart grid do?
• There is little dispute that our overdependence on fossil fuel energy sources is unsustainable. Essential to breaking our addiction to fossil fuels is our ability to generate new sources of clean, renewable energy and our success in developing profitable pathways to optimize our energy usage.

• Today’s smart grid technology allows us to collect data about how customers use electricity, and then provide customers with the opportunity to actively participate in the effort to optimize their energy usage, giving them the tools they need to become more energy efficient. The result is a more balanced energy grid where customers and grid operators can work together to drop, shift, interrupt, integrate and balance energy usage in an effort to reduce our dependence on traditional sources of energy generation. Customers can become active participants in the markets for the first time in history with the advent of new smart grid communications technology.

Viridity Energy provides large energy consumers with powerful tools to increase energy efficiency and create energy revenues. Viridity’s unique and flexible VPower™ platform enables customers to dynamically shift and balance energy load, integrate advanced energy technologies and convert existing energy investments into lucrative new revenue streams. Viridity helps organizations achieve sustainability goals and contribute to the greater good by stabilizing energy price fluctuations. Headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, Viridity was founded in 2008 by former executives of PJM Interconnection.